Lingle orders unpaid days off for workers - Phoenix Business Journal:

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In an address broadcast from theStates Capitol, Lingle also said she woule scale back free Medicaid benefits to low-income adults and said the state would delay paying some of its largee bills until July. The governor is also askinhg the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the Office of Hawaiiam Affairs to implement equivalent furlough days or restrict their Hawaii law does not allow ordering furloughs for the Departmentfof Education, the University of Hawaii or the Hawaiu Health Systems Corporation, but Lingle said theier spending will be restricted in an amount equivalentf to the three-days-per-month furlough. The which start July 1, amount to about a 13.
8 percent pay cut, or abour $5,500 for a worker making $40,000 a year. As with Lingle does not have to negotiate the furloughz with any of the unions representingstats workers. Lingle has said she doesn’t want to lay off workersx because of the disruptive effect of contract rules that would enables senior workersto “bump” junior workers, even if they workedx in different state agencies. The furloughz will save $688 million. Lingle said the savingsx are needed to close a gapof $730 milliojn between now and June 30, 2011, as forecast by the state’s Councipl on Revenues May 28. All Hawaii is expected to see tax revenus fallby $2.
7 billion over the next two “If we do not implement the furlougyh plan, we would have to lay off up to 10,000 employees to realize an equivalent amount of savings,” Linglee said. The state has about 46,00p0 workers, including 21,000 employees of the Department of Lingle blamed the fiscal shortfall on thelingerinf recession, rising unemployment, dropping visitor arrivals, a declinse in private building permits, a doubling of foreclosures, and recorc bankruptcy levels. The state Legislature ended its session last montu by raising tax rates onhotel rooms, high-incomee earners, luxury home transactions and tobacco to help meet the budgetr shortfall.
But Lingle, a Republica n whose vetoes of those measures were overridden bymajoritg Democrats, said she would not ask for additional tax increases. She also rejectecd calls for legalizing gambling. However, Lingle noted that 70 percent of statr operating funds go to labor costs and that the statwe had provided employee wage increase of betweebn 16 and 29 percent over the past fouryear “when our economy was